At approximately 9:40pm Friday, July 17th 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr., the only surviving son of the 35th president, his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and her sister, Lauren Bessette, were killed when a Piper Saratoga, piloted by John, crashed into 110-foot deep water about seven miles south of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.
Kennedy took off from Essex County Airport, NJ at 8:38pm.
The plane was last seen on radar at 9:39pm.
A Kennedy family friend called the Coast Guard at 2:15am Saturday.
The first search vessel was launched at about 4:30am.
An Air National Guard C-130 and many Civil Air Patrol aircraft joined the search.
The wreckage was not found until the following Wednesday, after the oceanographic survey ship "Rude" and the salvage and recovery vessel USS Grasp joined the search.
Navy divers found all three people strapped in their seats.
An at sea burial of all three was conducted Friday aboard the destroyer USS Brisco in view of the Jacquelin Kennedy Onassis shore-front estate.
The National Transportation Safety Board concluded in mid 2000 that pilot error was the probable cause.
It was very dark with a thick haze and Kennedy, a relatively-inexperienced pilot, was flying over water with no lights for reference - conditions conducive to "spatial disorientation" where pilots lose their sense of position and motion relative to the earth's surface.
Radar analysis indicated that the plane was falling at 5,000 feet per minute, possibly indicating a "graveyard spiral," a corkscrew descent where the pilot has lost control.
